Notes

[Notebook TTC, DB 54]

[Sunday 22 July 2001 - Saturday 28 July 2001]

[page 90]

Lonergan, Verbum p 37. Lonergan.

Substantia/accidens. Thomas saw the world as a collection of independently existing entities (substances) and dependent properties (accidents), all held together from outside by god. We like to see the world as one divine substance (process)

[page 91]

manifesting itself in a multitude of activities such as myself and all the other independent entities which are in fact the tips of icebergs rooted in the world. As Lonergan says 'the possibility of exact expression of a philosophical position arises only long after the philosopher's death when his influence has moulded the culture which is the background and vehicle of such expression'.

'quod quid est is at the very centre of Aristotelian and Thomistic thought' (vector in transfinite Hilbert Space?)

p 42: 'etiam Deus cognoscitur a nobis per phantasma [measurement] sui effectus, inquantum cognoscimus Deum per negationem vel per causalitatem vel per excellentiam' [my underline]

p 44 'We do have occasional flashes of insight, but angelic, and still more divine knowledge is exclusively that sort of thing, as continuous blaze of the light of understanding . . . .'

We are always understanding, sometimes

[page 92]

instantaneously (from a subjective point of view), sometimes after long processing.

Motivation: We are looking for heaven, and we conceptualize it as an ideal region in human 'parameter space', ie where we are happiest, whatever that means. Such judgments are personal and relative, and we can only generalize about them by counting how many individuals choose each of the available states of being. Such a measure is meaningful only on a level playing field (where every state is equally accessible to every individual). Otherwise we need some sort of transformation which converts values on the actual playing fields to values on a level playing field and vice versa, giving us a little insight into the bureaucratic (deterministic) implementation of justice.

We want JUSTICE and POWER to be orthogonal, instead of parallel.

Feeling for an engine engendered by the

[page 93]

realization that it has a finite lifetime that can be extended or reduced by how it is treated is analogous to our feelings for ourselves and our peers.

Putting love one another into practice in the world we have inherited from our evolutionary past.

Why this deep excursion into mathematics and the study of the infinite? Because it is the only model big enough to embrace the world of feeling and parametrize the axes of feeling like self-esteem, security, happiness, energy, contentment, etc etc all the binaries lassitude-energy etc etc.

In a curved space there is a preferred direction along each dimension (or on some) eg down rather than up is preferred by gravitational curvature.

p 47 The fundamental premiss: 'natures act intelligibly, not because they are intelligent, for they are not, but because they are concretions of divine ideas and a

[page 94]

divine plan.'

Intelligence decodes. When the code is known (as in angels) intelligence becomes a purely routine deterministic operation that can be carried out by a Turing Machine (eg DES). Electronic Frontier Foundation. When the code is not known a search is necessary through all possible encodings to find the set of encoding/decoding that yields meaningful texts. The optimum search starts in the most probably zones. If there are none such, it must work its way through the whole space.

Bayesian probability. Each clue allows is to narrow the search space by excluding certain spaces.

Sunday 22 July 2001

Monday 23 July 2001

Tuesday 24 July 2001

Wednesday 25 July 2001

Thursday 26 July 2001

[Verbum] p 52 'The fact of indefinite human progress precludes the possibility of beatitude being placed in this life.'

[page 95]

All communication is physical and language becomes meaningless if it does not ultimately rest on physical (observable) meanings.

Salvation is possible when foresight (measured in say, seconds) is greater than the system response time.

The concept of love has been greatly debased by the distinction between eros and agape/caritas, coupled with the contention that one is better (or more virtuous, or at least preferable) to the other. This, like the distinction between potency and act, matter and form, matter and spirit, etc etc are all model dependent and the model upon which they depend (ie Universe not self actualizing, but must be driven by a being whose authority is full and eternal) is a mistake. The actuality of the Universe we inhabit is full and constant, but it may change form, giving us the vast and complex world we inhabit.

PROSTITUTION : DISEASE (REDUCED COMPLEXITY)

[page 96]

COMPLEXITY = F(1/error rate)

Disease = high error rate = reduced complexity, security etc etc.

Start at the bottom on an environmental science degree. Theology is the ultimate environmental science.

ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE VS NON-ES

{ES} U {NON-ES} = TOTAL SCIENCE

We can consider either that particle or its environment (the field)

[Human Health and the Environment]

Friday 27 July 2001

Saturday 28 July 2001

Related sites:

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Concordat Watch
Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty

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Copyright: You may copy this material freely provided only that you quote fairly and provide a link (or reference) to your source.

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Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Anonymous, The Cloud of Unknowing, HarperOne (August 31, 2004) Language: English ISBN-10: 0060737751 ISBN-13: 978-0060737757 2004 Book Description 'Written by an anonymous English monk during the late fourteenth century, The Cloud of Unknowing is a sublime expression of what separates God from humanity and is widely regarded as a hallmark of Western literature and spirituality. A work of simplicity, courage, and lucidity, it is a contemplative classic on the deep mysteries of faith. "Lift up your heart to God with a humble impulse of love and have himself as your aim, not any of his goods ... Set yourself to rest in this darkness, always crying out after him whom you love. For if you are to experience him or to see him at all, insofar as it is possible here, it must always be in this cloud and in this darkness." –– The Cloud of Unknowing'  Amazon   back

Christie, Agatha, Elephants Can Remember, Bantam Books 1984 'A Classic example of the ingenious three-card trick she has been playing on us for so many years.' Sunday Express  Amazon   back

Crombie, A C, The History of Science from Augustine to Galileo, Dover Publications 1996 Amazon customer review: 'This is a very widely encompassing account of the evolution and development of science through history. The considerations of the sociopolitical and philosophical climates pertaining to the times gives the reader a basis of understanding why science progressed as it did. The account is very well organised and lucid, although it fails in some aspects to consider the contributions of the Far Eastern civilizations. It makes a very valuable contribution to help appreciate acutely the value of those who contributed to science's development.' A Customer   Amazon   back

Electronic Frontier Foundation, , Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Policies and Chip Design, O'Reilly and Associates 1998 Jacket: 'Sometimes you have to do good engineering to straighten out twisted politics. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has done so by exploding the government-supported myth that the Data Encryption Standard (DES) has real security. National Security Agency and FBI officials say our civil liberties must be curtailed because the government can't crack the security of DES to wiretap bad guys. Bu somehow a tiny nonprofit has designed and built a $200 000 machine that can crack DES in a week. Who's lying and why? For the first time, the book reveals full technical details on how researchers and data recovery engineers can build a working DES Cracker.   Amazon   back

Electronic Frontier Foundation, , Cracking DES: Secrets of Encryption Research, Wiretap Policies and Chip Design, O'Reilly and Associates 1998 Jacket: 'Sometimes you have to do good engineering to straighten out twisted politics. The Electronic Frontier Foundaiton has done so by exploding the government-supported myth that the Data Encryption Stanbdard (DES) has real security. National Security Agency and FBI officials say our civil liberties must be curtailed because the government can't crack the security of DES to wiretap bad guys. Bu somehow a tiny nonprofit has designed and built a $200 000 machine that can crack DES in a week. Who's lying and why? For the first time, the book reveals full technical details on how researchers and data recovery engineers can build a working DES Cracker.   Amazon   back

Feynman, Richard P, and Robert B Leighton, Matthew Sands, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (volume 3) : Quantum Mechanics, Addison Wesley 1970 Foreword: 'This set of lectures tries to elucidate from the beginning those features of quantum mechanics which are the most basic and the most general. ... In each instance the ideas are introduced together with a detailed discussion of some specific examples - to try to make the physical ideas as real as possible.' Matthew Sands  Amazon   back

Hallett, Michael, Cantorian set theory and limitation of size, Oxford UP 1984 Jacket: 'This book will be of use to a wide audience, from beginning students of set theory (who can gain from it a sense of how the subject reached its present form), to mathematical set theorists (who will find an expert guide to the early literature), and for anyone concerned with the philosophy of mathematics (who will be interested by the extensive and perceptive discussion of the set concept).' Daniel Isaacson.  Amazon   back

Landecker, Hannah, Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies, Harvard University Press 2007 Amazon New Scientist : 'The discovery that it was possible to grow cells in a lab dish transformed them from being the immutable building blocks of individual bodies into plastic, malleable resources with a life of their own. In Culturing Life, anthropologist Hannah Landecker skillfully interweaves the scientific, historical, and cultural aspects of this transformation, and examines how cell culture challenges humanity's notions of individuality and immortality...An insightful and thought-provoking perspective on how technology has changed scientists' and society's understanding of life.' --Claire Ainsworth  Amazon   back

Lo, Hoi-Kwong, and Tim Spiller, Sandra Popescu, Introduction to Quantum Computation and Information, World Scientific 1998 Jacket: 'This book provides a pedagogical introduction to the subjects of quantum information and computation. Topics include non-locality of quantum mechanics, quantum computation, quantum cryptography, quantum error correction, fault tolerant quantum computation, as well as some experimental aspects of quantum computation and quantum cryptography. A knowledge of basic quantum mechanics is assumed.'  Amazon   back

Lonergan, Bernard J F, and Robert M. Doran, Frederick E. Crowe (eds), Verbum : Word and Idea in Aquinas (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan volume 2) , University of Toronto Press 1997 Jacket: 'Verbum is a product of Lonergan's eleven years of study of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The work is considered by many to be a breakthrough in the history of Lonergan's theology ... . Here he interprets aspects in the writing of Aquinas relevant to trinitarian theory and, as in most of Lonergan's work, one of the principal aims is to assist the reader in the search to understand the workings of the human mind.'  Amazon   back

Martin, Malachi, Vatican, Jove 1988 Editorial Reviews 'From Publishers Weekly The subject of this long and intriguing novel is the Vatican's elaborate bureaucracy, in particular its powerful financial network, headed by a mysterious figure known as the Keeper. Another central character, who gives the story its slant, is American Richard Lansing, who joins the Vatican as a young monsignore in 1945, and becomes the confidant of five successive popes. When he reaches the apex of his career, he staunchly opposes any Church bargain with Mammon. Martin (author of bestsellers The Final Conclave and Hostage to the Devil), was a professor in the Vatican's Pontifical Biblical Institute: he has an insider's knowledge of the intrigues and power plays that go on behind the papacy's smooth facade. His tale encompasses the fall of Mussolini, the penetration of the Vatican by a Soviet mole, the murder of a pope in the Soviet interest (with help from Vatican officials), and other major events real or imagined. Vatican is not unlike a bureaucracy itself: intricate, far from iconoclastic, and impeded in its forward progress by obsessive attention to detail.' Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.  Amazon   back

Nielsen, Michael A, and Isaac L Chuang, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information, Cambridge University Press 2000 Review: A rigorous, comprehensive text on quantum information is timely. The study of quantum information and computation represents a particularly direct route to understanding quantum mechanics. Unlike the traditional route to quantum mechanics via Schroedinger's equation and the hydrogen atom, the study of quantum information requires no calculus, merely a knowledge of complex numbers and matrix multiplication. In addition, quantum information processing gives direct access to the traditionally advanced topics of measurement of quantum systems and decoherence.' Seth Lloyd, Department of Quantum Mechanical Engineering, MIT, Nature 6876: vol 416 page 19, 7 March 2002.  Amazon   back

Peskin, Michael E, and Dan V Schroeder, An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory, Westview Press 1995 Amazon Product Description 'This book is a clear and comprehensive introduction to quantum field theory, one that develops the subject systematically from its beginnings. The book builds on calculation techniques toward an explanation of the physics of renormalization.'   Amazon   back

Tomonaga, Sin-itiro, The Story of Spin, University of Chicago Press 1997 Jacket: 'The Story of Spin, as told by Sin-itiro Tomonaga and lovingly translated by Takeshi Oka, is a brilliant and witty account of the development of modern quantum theory, which takes electron spin as a pivotal concept. Reading these twelve lectures on the fundamental aspects of physics is a joyful experience that is rare indeed.' Laurie Brown, Northwestern University.  Amazon   back

Wigner, Eugene, Symmetries and Reflections: Scientific Essays , MIT Press 1970 Jacket: 'This volume contains some of Professor Wigner's more popular papers which, in their diversity of subject and clarity of style, reflect the author's deep analytical powers and the remarkable scope of his interests. Included are articles on the nature of physical symmetry, invariance and conservation principles, the structure of solid bodies and of the compound nucleus, the theory of nuclear fission, the effects of radiation on solids, and the epistemological problems of quantum mechanics. Other articles deal with the story of the first man-made nuclear chain reaction, the long term prospects of nuclear energy, the problems of Big Science, and the role of mathematics in the natural sciences. In addition, the book contains statements of Wigner's convictions and beliefs as well as memoirs of his friends Enrico Fermi and John von Neumann. Eugene P. Wigner is one of the architects of the atomic age. He worked with Enrco Fermi at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago at the beginning of the Manhattan Project, and he has gone on to receive the highest honours that science and his country can bestow, including the Nobel Prize for physics, the Max Planck Medal, the Enrico Fermi Award and the Atoms for Peace Award. '.  Amazon   back

Papers

Chaitin, Gregory J, "Randomness and Mathematical Proof", Scientific American, 232, 5, May 1975, page 47-52. 'Although randomness can be precisely defined and can even be measured, a given number cannot be proved random. This enigma establishes a limit in what is possible in mathematics'. back

Links

Absolute infinite - Wikipedia Absolute infinite - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'The Absolute Infinite is mathematician Georg Cantor's concept of an "infinity" that transcended the transfinite numbers. Cantor equated the Absolute Infinite with God. He held that the Absolute Infinite had various mathematical properties, including that every property of the Absolute Infinite is also held by some smaller objec' back

Alexis Carrel - Wikipedia Alexis Carrel - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia 'Alexis Carrel (June 28, 1873 - November 5, 1944) was a French surgeon, biologist and eugenicist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1912. He was also a member of Jacques Doriot's Parti Populaire Francais (PPF), the most collaborationist party during Vichy France.' back

Aquinas 13 Summa: I 2 3: Whether God exists? I answer that the existence of God can be proved in five ways. The first and more manifest way is the argument from motion. . . . The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. . . . The third way is taken from possibility and necessity . . . The fourth way is taken from the gradation to be found in things. . . . The fifth way is taken from the governance of the world. back

Aquinas 39 Whether God is in all things 'I answer that, God is in all things; not, indeed, as part of their essence, nor as an accident, but as an agent is present to that upon which it works. For an agent must be joined to that wherein it acts immediately and touch it by its power; hence it is proved in Phys. vii that the thing moved and the mover must be joined together. Now since God is very being by His own essence, created being must be His proper effect; as to ignite is the proper effect of fire. Now God causes this effect in things not only when they first begin to be, but as long as they are preserved in being; as light is caused in the air by the sun as long as the air remains illuminated. Therefore as long as a thing has being, God must be present to it, according to its mode of being. But being is innermost in each thing and most fundamentally inherent in all things since it is formal in respect of everything found in a thing, as was shown above (7, 1). Hence it must be that God is in all things, and innermostly.' back

Aquinas 608 Whether man's happiness consists in the vision of the divine essence? ' Final and perfect happiness can consist in nothing else than the vision of the Divine Essence. To make this clear, two points must be observed. First, that man is not perfectly happy, so long as something remains for him to desire and seek: secondly, that the perfection of any power is determined by the nature of its object.' back

Digital philosophy - Wikipedia Digital philosophy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'Digital philosophy is a new direction in philosophy and cosmology advocated by certain mathematicians and theoretical physicists, e.g., Gregory Chaitin, Edward Fredkin, Stephen Wolfram, and Konrad Zuse (see his Calculating Space). Digital philosophy grew out of an earlier digital physics (both terms are due to Fredkin), which proposes to ground much of physical theory in cellular automata. Specifically, digital physics works through the consequences of assuming that the universe is a gigantic Turing-complete cellular automaton.' back

Fixed point theorem - Wikipedia Fixed point theorem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In mathematics, a fixed point theorem is a result saying that a function F will have at least one fixed point (a point x for which F(x) = x), under some conditions on F that can be stated in general terms. Results of this kind are amongst the most generally useful in mathematics. The Banach fixed point theorem gives a general criterion guaranteeing that, if it is satisfied, the procedure of iterating a function yields a fixed point. By contrast, the Brouwer fixed point theorem is a non-constructive result: it says that any continuous function from the closed unit ball in n-dimensional Euclidean space to itself must have a fixed point, but it doesn't describe how to find the fixed point (See also Sperner's lemma).' back

Hans-Thomas Janka Collapsing stars, supernovae, and gamma ray bursts 'When massive stars die, they don't just fade away. Their lives end in the most spectacular and most luminous explosions that we know. For weeks they can become nearly as bright as a whole galaxy. The stellar debris is expelled with velocities up to ten percent of the speed of light and an energy of motion that equals the radiation of the Sun during its whole life. In rare cases this amount of energy can even be released in an enormously intense flash of gamma radiation. Such a gamma-ray burst outshines all stars of the universe for a period of seconds to many minutes and can be accompanied by a stellar explosion ten or even fifty times more energetic than usual.' back

John L Bell Continuity and Infinitesimals - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 'The usual meaning of the word continuous is “unbroken” or “uninterrupted”: thus a continuous entity—a continuum—has no “gaps.” We commonly suppose that space and time are continuous, and certain philosophers have maintained that all natural processes occur continuously: witness, for example, Leibniz's famous apothegm natura non facit saltus—“nature makes no jump.” In mathematics the word is used in the same general sense, but has had to be furnished with increasingly precise definitions. So, for instance, in the later 18th century continuity of a function was taken to mean that infinitesimal changes in the value of the argument induced infinitesimal changes in the value of the function. With the abandonment of infinitesimals in the 19th century this definition came to be replaced by one employing the more precise concept of limit.' back

NASA Jupiter Hubble Space Telescope best colour image of Jupiter's Little Red Spot back

NIST Fundamental Physical Constants from NIST 'Founded in 1901, NIST is a non-regulatory federal agency within the U.S. Commerce Department's Technology Administration. NIST's mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.' back

PDG - U of California Particle Data Group 'The Particle Data Group is an international collaboration charged with summarizing Particle Physics, as well as related areas of Cosmology and Astrophysics. In 2006, the PDG consists of 166 authors from 100 institutions in 19 countries. The summaries are published in even-numbered years as a now 1200-page book, the Review of Particle Physics, and as an abbreviated version (320 pages), the Particle Physics Booklet.' back

Propositional Calculus - Wikipedia Propositional Caluclus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 'In logic and mathematics, a propositional calculus (or a sentential calculus) is a formal system in which formuae representing propositions can be formed by combining atomic propositions using logical connectives, and a system of formal proof rules allows certain formulae to be established as "theorems" of the formal system. . . . Many different formulations exist which are all more or less equivalent but differ in the details of (1) their language, that is, the particular collection of primitive symbols and operator symbols, (2) the set of axioms, or distinguished formulae, and (3) the set of inference rules.' back